Wednesday, March 24, 2010

ObamaCare, This Dog Won't Hunt.

Sunday's Socialist Triumph (By Tony Blankley) Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday launched the Democrats' argument for the health care bill, claiming, "This is an American proposal that honors the traditions of our country." Does that suggest that opposition is un-American? And what are the traditions that are American that this law fulfills? The Democrats argue that the bill fulfills the "right" of all Americans to government-assured health care services. The congressional Democrats claim many other things that a majority of the country believes to be inconsistent with truth and reality.

At its core, the new law would expand health care to 32 million who lack it. Most of the bill's estimated $938 billion cost for coverage would pay for assistance to help families with annual incomes of up to $88,000 pay for insurance, although small businesses also would receive subsidies as in incentive to cover their employees.

The two bills combined call for nearly $1 trillion in higher taxes and Medicare cuts over 10 years, provisions that sparked strong opposition from congressional Republicans, all of whom voted against the bill's passage.

For the first time, millions of Americans would be required to purchase insurance, and face penalties if they refused.

That requirement was at the heart of much of the opposition to the legislation by Republicans, conservatives activists and others, and 13 attorneys generals have already filed suit to try to invalidate the law.

So, considering the rhetorical onslaught that is about to be unleashed on the public, to paraphrase (and with the deepest apologies to) Winston Churchill on the occasion of the fall of France in June 1940:

What House Minority Leader John A. Boehner has called the Battle of Capitol Hill is over. I expect that the Battle of the Electorate is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of a nonsocialist America. Upon it depends our own American way of life and the long continuity of our institutions and our history. The whole fury and might of the media and the Democratic Party must very soon be trained on the electorate.

If they can stand up to the coming propaganda, America may be free, and the life of the wider free world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if the voters succumb to those seven months of blandishments and deceptions, then free America -- including all that we have known and cared for -- will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let the public therefore brace itself to its duties, and so concentrate its mind on the true facts, that if the American spirit of freedom and dignity last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was the American voters' finest hour."

As I said, apologies to Winston Churchill for borrowing and abusing his immortal words on the fall of France and the beginning of the Battle of Britain.

And yet, for us, now and here is where we must battle for our freedom. Not, pray God, with bullets, but with words and ideas.

This battle will not be fought in the skies over London, but on the Internet and airwaves over America. The target is not the homes and factories of the people, but the minds and judgments of the voters. But the power of a mind confused and misused is every bit as threatening to freedom as is the power of bombs and bullets.

The path to Sunday's catastrophic vote was paved with cynical blandishments by the Democratic Party's congressional leaders to their members. The votes were induced by the assurance that in the seven remaining months before the election, the true facts of their legislation, which led to overwhelming public opposition to the bill when passed -- can be undone in the minds of the voters by remorselessly repeating misconceptions to the public.

The most mendacious, cruel and destructive proposition put forth by the Democratic congressional leadership -- and soon by almost all its ranks and files -- is, of course, the outlandish claim that the bill will reduce the deficit.

The uncontrolled growth of the annual deficits and total public debt is at the crux of the public's slack-jawed horror of Washington policy these past 18 months. Washington is placing our grandchildren's prosperity on a slow boat to China.

Everything that more than 200 years of American invention, investment, labor, suffering and triumph, war and victory has created is being sold off to the world's lowest bidders in a matter of months.

So far, the public has not been fooled by the claim that a new entitlement for 30 million people is being created -- and it will cost less.

But now the Democrats have the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) official accounting -- and they plan to use it as a shield and a sword as they wade into the public debate.

Of course, every informed person understands why the CBO calculation is an honest measure of a dishonest bill. Republican Rep. Paul Ryan at the health care summit, former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, in last Sunday's New York Times, and hundreds of commentators have all laid out the lamentable, indisputable and undisputed fact that the CBO methodology has been gamed by the congressional Democrats to turn what will be more than a trillion dollars in further public deficit and debt into a fantasy savings of $140 billion. {(The CBO, Congressional Budget Office, is using VOO-DOO Economics.)Editor's Note.}

While Medicare is at about $30 trillion in unfunded liability by 2070, the bill preposterously claims it is going to cut Medicare by half a trillion dollars a decade. The quarter- to half-trillion dollars per 10 years that it will cost to pay Medicare doctors enough to keep them providing services has simply been put in another bill. The mendacities go on and on. They are not merely small, politically useful little deceptions. They are of a dimension that may destroy the republic.

The Democratic congressional leadership seems to have a stunningly insulting view of their potential voters' intelligence. But on such a basis is the battle for the minds of the voters joined.

Never will the wisdom and common sense of the American public have been put to a more fateful test. The organized opposition to the bill must do its best. But, as fitting to a constitutional republic, the fate of American freedom lies with the people.

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Tony Blankley is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington. E-mail him at TonyBlankley@gmail.com.

Although military and congressional leaders insisted it wasn’t necessary, the Senate gave final approval Monday to a bill intended to reassure Tricare beneficiaries that national health care reform won’t require them to buy additional health insurance or to pay a penalty if they do not. Called the Tricare Affirmation Act, the bill now on its way to the White House says Defense Department health coverage will be treated as minimal essential coverage under the new national health care law, which means that Tricare beneficiaries would not be subject to the $750 penalty created by Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act if they do not have private health insurance. The bill also says that health care coverage provided to non-appropriated fund employees of the Defense Department also satisfies the requirement of being minimal coverage. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., the Senate armed services personnel subcommittee chairman who shepherded the bill through the Senate, said he hoped passage quelled doubts. “Following months of confusion surrounding military health care programs, we can now definitively tell our service members and their families today that their health care is secure,” Webb said in a statement. “As one who grew up in the military, served as a Marine in Vietnam and spent five years in the Pentagon, I know the special obligation we have to provide our military service members, their families, and our veterans with the very finest health care coverage available. Today, we can tell them that we’ve continued to make good on that promise,” said Webb, who grew up in an Air Force family. The Senate passed the bill, HR 4887, by voice vote and with no debate on its first day back after a two-week recess that followed passage of the historic health reform law. The House of Representatives passed the Tricare Affirmation Act on March 20 by a 403-0 vote, on the eve of its passage of the health reform law, after questions were raised about whether military families and retirees might be hurt by the new law. The acting head of Tricare, Charles Rice, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius both issued statements saying Tricare met the definition of essential coverage. But concerns have continued, fueled in part by some Republicans who are trying to get the reform law repealed, which is what led the Senate to pass the House bill. While the bill addresses the narrow question of “essential” coverage, it does not answer every concern about whether health reform, Public Law 111-148, will affect military members and retirees. Rice said in an April 2 statement that his agency was battling “misinformation” and was working to squelch rumors that Tricare benefits will be lost as a result of the new law. Passage of the Tricare Assurance Act was praised by representatives of major military and veterans’ group. Retired Navy Vice Adm. Norbert Ryan Jr., Military Officers Association of America president, said his group accepted assurances from congressional and administration leaders that Tricare was not going to be harmed, but “the lack of statutory clarity was a source of concern to many.” The bill, Ryan said, provides “clarity beyond any doubt.”

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I am a thoroughly civilized, humane, cosmopolitan, polished, restrained, enjoyable, entertaining Info-maniac. I am a staunch exponent of individual dignity, freedom, equal access to legal services, and equal protection of the law. Here I hope to demonstrate my emotional restraint, humbleness of sentiment, psychological subtlety, lucid style, and simple language, without evading political reality or eternal truth. Daily I am excited that I have the right to create the beginning of a new self and to challenge old habits and attitudes I no longer choose to accept. I choose to relax in the present with my direction firmly in mind. I have an enormous capacity for creative and clever ideas and thoughts. It is phenomenal what I can do. I am capable of so much learning and absorbing a lot of information. My potential is a source of pleasant surprise for me.
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